


Blood Brothers

by ShakespeareFreak



Category: Hamlet - Shakespeare
Genre: Betrayal, Brothers, Canonical Character Death, Familial Bonds, Family, Fraternal Bonds, Freeform, Murder, Poetry, Siblings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-07
Updated: 2019-05-07
Packaged: 2020-02-27 16:08:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 132
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18742465
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShakespeareFreak/pseuds/ShakespeareFreak
Summary: King Hamlet and Claudius discover that the fraternal bond can be as cruel as it is kind... and stronger than any cruelty it might engender.





	Blood Brothers

Blood brothers  
By blood bound in birth,  
By blood ripped asunder,  
By blood rejoined.

Blood bondage runs through the thin highway of veins,  
So cruelly bound by love and hate together.  
A murder flashes though the air, a drop of poison enters the wholesome blood,  
And it slows, then ceases to flow.

He steals his brother's life, his throne, his wife,  
His very breath.

Pride, self-loathing, bitterness, hate... it drags him down,  
Closer and closer to the cold dirt under which his brother lies interred,  
Until revenge, the sharp poisoned point of a fencing foil, foils him,  
And his blood flows onto the hungry earth that ate his blood brother.

Blood brothers...  
Reunited at last  
Within a tomb,  
Their bones slumbering side by side.

Perhaps they meet again,  
In the next life.

**Author's Note:**

> _Written approx. 2012_
> 
> This idea had been floating around in my head for quite some time—literally _years_ —before I actually wrote it. Then one day at an open mic, someone urged my to try coming up with a poem on the spot, as I recited it. This, minus a few minor edits, was the result.


End file.
